


Valentine's Day

by Balder12



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fluff, Holidays, M/M, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-27
Updated: 2012-10-27
Packaged: 2017-11-17 04:17:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/547517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Balder12/pseuds/Balder12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean explains Valentine's Day to Castiel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Valentine's Day

Dean was on a supply run to a Walgreens in Central Florida, tossing bags of chips into the shopping basket for himself, and energy bars for Sam. He glanced regretfully at the refrigerators, which didn’t hold anything stronger than beer.  
  
“I hate the South,” Dean muttered to Castiel. “No liquor in the convenience stores. How is that convenient?” Castiel felt certain that Dean would manage to find alcohol somewhere, but he sensed that Dean wouldn’t appreciate that observation, so he let it pass.  
  
Dean tapped his arm and nodded toward the front of the store. “Hey, look at that kid,” he whispered, pointing at a boy in a college sweatshirt who couldn’t have been more than nineteen. The boy was standing in front of a heavily-ribboned red and pink display, looking it up and down urgently. He grabbed a red box with a bow and started to take off, then doubled back, tossed down the box, and grabbed a bigger one, along with a particularly sad-looking single rose.  He scampered toward the counter to pay.  
  
Dean glanced at the time display on his cell phone. “5:15 on February 14. How much do you want to bet his mom reminded him that it’s Valentine’s Day?”  
  
Castiel had no idea what Dean was talking about. “Valentine’s Day?”  
  
“Seriously?” said Dean. “Sometimes I forget that you’re from another plane of existence.” He tugged at the edge of Castiel’s trench coat, leading him over to the display.  
  
“Okay, so, when a boy–like our boy who just legged it out of here–likes a girl, on Valentine’s Day he’s supposed to buy her candy, and flowers, and a stupid lacy card shaped like a heart”–here he gestured to the red paper shapes hanging over the display–“and hope that if he spends enough money on her, she’ll want to sleep with him.” Dean considered. “Or if she’s already sleeping with him, that she’ll want to keep sleeping with him.”  
  
“So, on Valentine’s Day, women are encouraged to sell their bodies for candy? And greeting cards shaped like organs?” Castiel asked. This seemed like a troubling tradition.  
  
“No . . . Well, kind of. I mean, if you’re a guy, then you hope they will. But you can’t put it that way to them, or they definitely won’t bone you. It takes tact. Girls think all the glitter and crap is romantic. I guess.”  
  
Castiel pointed to the boxes at the bottom of the display, each of which contained dozens of small cards. “If you give a card to the woman you want to have sex with, why do they sell so many together? Is it for . . . ?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to finish the sentence.  
  
Dean grinned. “No, but I like how you think. Those are for kids.”  
  
“ _Children_?” Castiel was horrified. “Why would anyone allow children to participate in this? And why would they need so many cards?”  
  
“No, no, it’s not like that,” Dean said, laughing and a little embarrassed. He lowered his voice. “The kids aren’t having sex, for God’s sake.” He sighed. “Okay, maybe I’m being too cynical. Valentine’s Day isn’t just for getting girls to have sex with you. I mean, it is, but it’s also, like, this super fluffy thing that kids do, to show they like each other. And guys are supposed to buy stuff for their girlfriends to prove that they care enough to set an alert on their iPhones to remind them what day it is.”  
  
“I see,” said Castiel, who didn’t. He found human mating rituals incomprehensible. Whenever he tried to follow them he ended up humiliating himself. Like that time he’d decided to take his cues from  _Dr. Sexy, M.D_. He knew that Dean had a crush on Dr. Sexy, no matter how much he protested that he watched the show for the medical drama, so it seemed like a logical step to imitate the character. Dean had been nice about it, but it'd been painfully obvious that he wasn’t nearly as happy with the roses as Dr. Sexy’s love interest was on the show.  
  
“So, since we’re . . .  _involved_ ’”--Castiel remained unclear on how he should describe their relationship--“am I supposed to do something today?” He’d gotten the impression during his time with humans that you generally weren’t allowed to ask what your social obligations were. Still, he’d rather ask, even if it was inappropriate, than be left clueless.  
  
Dean looked genuinely frightened. “No! No way. This has nothing to with us, and our  _whatever_. Do not do anything Valentine’s Day-related, Cas. Seriously. Nothing romantic should happen today, whatsoever.”  
  
“Very well, it won’t,” Castiel reassured him. He wasn’t sure why this holiday was a source of fear. Dean liked candy, and he was already willing to have sex, even though Castiel never spent any money on him at all. But if Dean didn’t want to celebrate it, that saved Castiel from having to feel his way awkwardly through another human obstacle course. He wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
Castiel dropped in on Dean again after midnight, and found him in an all-night laundromat near the town’s college campus, waiting for his clothes to dry. The students had covered the cork bulletin board on the wall with red and pink flyers for Valentine’s Day parties, and a showing of something called “The Vagina Monologues.” On of them had apparently created the sign on the spot, because a red magic marker and a pile of pink glitter had been left behind on the rickety folding table.  
  
It was a balmy night for February, and the dryers made the unairconditioned room close and hot. Dean had apparently set his hand down in the pile of glitter at some point, because it was now sparkling in long trails across his face where he’d wiped sweat away. There were glints of pink in his hair, too, and a swipe of it down the front of his black t-shirt.  
  
Dean glanced over at the sound of Castiel’s wings. “Am I crazy, or is February supposed to be winter?”  
  
“In the northern hemisphere.” Castiel agreed. “Why are you doing laundry in the middle of the night?”  
  
“Stupid Sam,” Dean said. “If I’d told him that I didn’t want to go out, he’d have followed me around all evening with his freaking puppy dog eyes, saying ‘Are you  _okay_ , Dean? Do you want to talk about your  _feelings_?’ He’d practically have me on suicide watch. So, I told him I was going out to the bars to pick up coeds. And then I figured that if I’m going to hide from him in a laundromat, I might as well do laundry.”  
  
The buzzer on the dryer went off. Dean picked up his laundry bag and started cramming the clean clothes into it. Castiel took it from him and emptied the clothes back out onto the table, careful to avoid the pile of glitter. He’d watched Sam fold clothes recently, while listening to him complain about how Dean always stuffed their clothes into the bag, letting them get wrinkled. Now that Castiel knew how the job was supposed to be done, it offended his sense of order to see Dean do it wrong. He started folding.  
  
“You don’t need to do that,” Dean said.  
  
“It needs doing.” Dean watched him fold up a couple of shirts, then sighed and joined him. Castiel’s neat squares piled up next to Dean’s more impressionistic polygons.  
  
“Why would Sam expect you to go out tonight, in particular?” Castiel asked, after awhile.  
  
“Valentine’s Day is basically unattached drifter Christmas.” Dean smiled, as if that thought brought back good memories. “Girls without a date get ridiculously desperate. I mean, even the hot ones. If you pay any attention to them, and act all lonely and forlorn, you’re totally in.”  
  
Castiel thought that he understood Dean’s horror at the idea of celebrating the holiday, now. “So, if I did something for you today, it would be like saying that I think you’re desperate? And willing to perform sexual favors for candy?”  
  
Dean hesitated. “Uh, no. Although, now that you put it that way, I don’t really want to be your candy hooker, either. It’s just . . . Valentine’s Day is what guys do for  _girls_ they like. That’s why it’s all pink and frilly, because girls like pink frilly things. I mean, some of them do, I guess. But I don’t, because I’m not a girl. I'm not  _the_ girl.” Castiel had no idea what distinction Dean was trying to make between “a” girl and “the” girl, but he was certain that Dean was neither one, so he just nodded.  
  
“I’m not saying that  _you’re_ the girl,” Dean went on, as if Castiel might have taken offense. “Because I totally don’t think that. Nobody’s the girl.” Dean considered. “Except Sam. Sam’s definitely a girl. But we’re both guys,” he concluded awkwardly.  
  
Castiel normally avoided reminding Dean that he wasn’t human. Dean had been raised to hate monsters, and while angels weren’t monsters, in Castiel’s opinion, he sensed that for Dean the line was a little blurry. He didn’t like to push his luck on the issue, especially these days. Still, whatever Dean was on about seemed to be important enough to him that Castiel thought he should clarify.  
  
“You do understand that I’m not really a man, don’t you?” he asked. “I’m just in a male vessel. Angels don’t have gender. We don’t even reproduce sexually.”  
  
“Right,” Dean muttered, “because that makes this less weird.” He studied a rip in the pair of jeans he was folding, and then went on, “So, okay, in Heaven, there’s no sex, and no one falls in love. Is it just all military discipline, all the time? Because that seems kind of lonely.”  
  
“No, of course not,” Castiel said. “We tried to present ourselves that way to humans for reasons of propaganda, but you’ve met enough of us by now to know that we’re just as moody and self-regarding as your own kind. For better or worse. We don’t have sex, so no one ever ‘falls in love’ in the way you mean. But we love each other, and we’re physically intimate. We aren’t material in the way that you are, so we can occupy the same space at the same time. We interpenetrate.”  
  
Dean eyed him skeptically. “Dude, ‘interpenetrate’ sounds like a fancy word for sex.”  
  
“You think everything sounds like a fancy word for sex,” Castiel said. “I’ve done both, and they’re not the same at all.”  
  
“Are your tentacles involved in all this 'interpenetration'?” Dean was smirking.  
  
“No, because I don’t  _have_ tentacles,” Castiel said sharply. He’d once done a rather poor job of describing his true form to Dean and, ever since, Dean had been convinced that he looked like a giant octopus. Or at least pretended to be convinced.  
  
Dean rolled his eyes. “Fine, your ‘prehensile limbs,’ then, or whatever you want to call them.”  
  
“They’re part of my body, Dean, so yes, obviously I touch people with them.” He didn’t understand why Dean thought that was so strange.  
  
“So, basically, there’s no sex in Heaven, but there’s tons of tentacle cuddling?” Dean asked.  
  
Castiel had to admit that wasn’t entirely inaccurate, minus the tentacles. “If you want to think of it like that.”  
  
“Yeah, well, in my Heaven we’re going to ‘interpenetrate’ the old fashioned way. I’m not cuddling with any tentacles.”  
  
Castiel knew that Dean was joking, mostly, and he felt certain that if Dean could see his true form he’d grow accustomed to it. But in the wake of Castiel’s attempt to usurp God’s throne, he had many enemies in Heaven. He wouldn’t be able to go home for a long time, if ever. Dean’s feelings about Castiel’s “tentacles” were a moot point, because Dean was unlikely to see them. But if Dean hadn’t figured that out yet, Castiel wasn’t going to break the news right now.  
  
“Okay,” he said, and focused on folding one of Dean’s flannel shirts. Dean kept folding, too, but his eyes slid over to check out Castiel’s face.  
  
“I mean, maybe there can be a  _little_ tentacle cuddling,” Dean said, carefully, like he thought that he'd hurt Castiel's feelings.  
  
Dean looked worried and terribly young, with his hair disheveled and that ridiculous pink glitter spread across his face like a second set of freckles. Castiel wanted to say a lot of things: ‘you’re beautiful,’ and ‘I love you,’ and ‘I’m sorry,’ and ‘never die.’ But all of those were things that would embarrass Dean, or else make him sad, and Castiel didn’t want to do either one. He kissed Dean, instead, harder than he’d meant to, and Dean was caught so completely by surprise that it took him a moment to wrap an arm around Castiel’s neck and kiss back.  
  
When Dean broke the kiss he only pulled back a couple of inches. “All right,” he said. “You win.   _Lots_ of tentacle cuddling. But none of that hentai crap.” He swiped a thumb across Castiel’s cheek. “You’ve got glitter on you.”  
  
“So do you,” Castiel said.  
  
Dean looked down at his shirt. “Oh, God damn it, I’m sparkly as a vampire!” But he was smiling. Castiel tried to brush the glitter off Dean’s face without much success. It was mostly an excuse to touch him, anyway.  
  
“Dean?”  
  
“Hmm?” Dean had shut his eyes and leaned into the hand.  
  
“I know I promised you that nothing romantic would happen today, whatsoever, but can we have sex, anyway?”  
  
Dean opened his eyes and grinned. “I think you can talk me into making an exception, just this once.”  



End file.
